


I'm Not Okay

by harshmorninglight



Series: The Umbrella Academy Kink Meme Fills [7]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (From other men not the Hargreeves), Also from ghosts, Angst, Bullying, But Like... The Worst (and then the best) of Sibling Dynamics, Corporal Punishment, Depression, Drug Addiction, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Ghosts, Honestly a LOT of Bullying, Hurt Klaus Hargreeves, Hurt/Comfort, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus Hargreeves Needs Help, Other Types Of Addiction, Predatory sexual behaviour, Self-Hatred, So much angst, breaking point, sibling dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-19 21:54:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18979096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harshmorninglight/pseuds/harshmorninglight
Summary: Klaus Hargreeves is infuriating. He knows it, his siblings know it, surely everyone at this point knows it. Despite that, he's desperate to be better, he wants to be better for them, he just has no idea how to show it. His siblings take their lesson too far, never foreseeing the consequences. Once the dust has settled, they attempt to piece the shattered fragments of their family, and their brother, back together.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Me: Is meant to be partaking in a quick and dirty fillathon.  
> Also me: reads the best TUA fic I've ever encountered ([He's Got The Curse Of Curves](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18961978/chapters/45022093) by mayfriend, gogogo), catches an inappropriate amount of Feels, writes 12k worth of hurt/comfort bullying fic, almost passes out in the process, realises I need to post this over two days because the editing required is Something Else, thankyouverymuch, feels like a failure, but hopes y'all enjoy.
> 
> (If it wasn't already clear, this is heavily inspired by the above linked fic, just without the smut and also without much of the humor, because I needed to Work Through whatever mood I'm going through right now, and this got pretty dark, if we're being completely honest. Mayfriend, I *really* hope you don't mind me using your fic for inspiration.)
> 
> This is kind of a spiritual sister to a fic I posted a couple of days ago, All In My Head. It could almost lead on from where that one left off, but that one was pretty canon compliant, and this one is a clear AU because Five is still around despite the Hargreeves siblings being 17 in this.
> 
> This is heavy going, but I promise the comfort aspect is coming tomorrow. I'm kind of fascinated by how things might have gone if Five had never left and the Hargreeves were maybe not quite so understanding of each other's personal struggles as a result. This is based on the following [prompt](https://umbrellakink.dreamwidth.org/284.html?thread=477724) from the kink meme, and I knew I had to fill it when I saw it:
> 
>  
> 
> _I'm really jonesing for some super mean teenage Hargreeves siblings ganging up on Klaus. Maybe Klaus does something objectively bad like make fun of Diego's stutter, but the bullying he receives in turn is just disproportionately awful and relentless. Give me tearful, trembling Klaus having every insecurity he has being thrown back at him by perceptive and cruel Five; give me Allison using her power to convince Klaus to humiliate himself for the amusement of herself, Five, Luther and Diego; give me Luther reporting every tiny incorrect thing Klaus does to Reginald, knowing it will result in harder training for him; give me Diego taking his pent up aggression out on him during fight practice; give me Vanya and Ben turning a blind eye because they're swept up in this very feral pack mentality of thinking he deserves it._  
>  _Finally give me Klaus having a complete breakdown before the others realize they've taken it way too far._  
>  _If you then want to add in some apologies and comfort I will literally give you my soul._

Klaus Hargreeves is under no illusion as to whether or not he’s a good person. He’s fully aware he’s rotten to the core, poisoned with a power that isn’t even useful to anyone, yet one he’s doomed to live with until the day he dies. He’s heard the lectures from Pogo and Sir Reginald, read the pamphlets on the selfishness of addicts (which everyone tells him he’s destined to be, most likely is one already); he’s been caught red-handed stealing priceless but overlooked artefacts from around the house, and sneaking out at night to meet older men in dark corners of clubs, when he should be tucked up asleep in bed like his other brothers and sisters.

He knows all this and he plays up to it like a sideshow entertainer. He’s seventeen, recognises deep down the signs of depression from the literature that often comes alongside addiction; he’s regularly traumatised by his increasingly frequent trips to the mausoleum (though, to be clear, his magic pills have certainly helped with that, even if they’ll never soothe the sound of the door locking behind Reginald), and if he can’t laugh about it, well, he’d probably just climb up onto the roof of The Umbrella Academy and fling himself right the fuck off.

He finds his entertainment where he can, and sometimes it works - it hits, and he makes the others laugh, and the sounds of that warm his cheeks and make him feel better inside, temporarily, like a herbal remedy that actually works - and sometimes it misses.

The day he makes fun of Diego, it misses spectacularly.

 

* * *

 

Klaus had tried to sneak in this morning without detection - last night had been a blur of older men telling him how pretty he was, plying him with drinks that burned on the way down his throat, asking for kisses in return. Eventually the kisses had turned blurry and the touches had turned painful - and he’d quite like to forget about that, _thank you very much_. But when he returns home, he’s dismayed to find his bedroom window maddeningly locked shut. He comes in through the kitchen, thankful nobody is in there, and is just about to creep up the stairs when the rest of his siblings come crashing towards him, their flushed and sweaty faces reliably informing him that they’ve been doing their training exercises for at least thirty minutes.

And then, disaster strikes, as Five teleports from nowhere and manages to crash right the fuck into him. The two of them plummet down the stairs, Five reeling back in disgust as he takes in Klaus’s prone form beneath him.

“What the fuck?” he asks, and from the top of the stairs they hear their father reprimand, “Number Five, you will receive a demerit for your appalling language.”

He hasn’t seen Klaus yet, and Klaus holds a desperate finger up to his lips, pleading with Five and his four other siblings piling up behind him. Finally, Five sighs, and in a flash of blue light, Klaus is back in his bedroom, stumbling backwards as Five warns him, “Stay here, we’ll  _all_ deal with you later.”

And then he’s gone, and Klaus rolls his eyes, annoyed at Five’s sanctimonious parting words. Nobody is going to _deal_ with him, he isn’t their child to punish. He’s a goddamn adult. Well, practically.

He quickly heads to the shower, wipes off the grime and smoke of last night, and is just finishing up dressing when he hears the sharp whistle that Reginald uses to indicate break time.

 _Great_.

Sure enough, they all pile into his room shortly afterwards - One to Three and Five to Seven, and Klaus feels overwhelmed as they all stare at him at once, a cacophony of disappointed expressions.

“Just getting my stretches in, already done the five kilometer run before I even got to bed,” he says, sticking an arm half heartedly over his head and leaning to one side. “How are you guys? Looking a bit sweaty, I see.”

“Dad knows you were out,” Luther begins bluntly, and Klaus stops his theatrics to let that one register. _Oh_. “We all received an extra half hour on top of our usual exercise.”

“He used you as whipping boys… and girls, sorry, Allison… for little old me?” Klaus asks, trying to act delighted, even as his heart sinks. “Wow, I never knew the old man cared so much!”

“He does. He cares about you disappearing, sneaking out, going God knows where,” Allison tells him.

“And he said that every time you do it, as nothing else seems to get through to you, _we’re_ the ones who will receive punishment,” Luther finishes off.

 _That clever old man_ , Klaus thinks. There’s not much more that their father can do to make Klaus’s life unbearable - short of severe physical violence, which Sir Reginald would consider beneath him. And so they’ve reached an impasse regarding Klaus’s recent behaviour. But he’s aware that Klaus is still a part of a team, and that it’s maybe the one thing left he’s trying to cling onto, the approval of the siblings he grew up with.

He looks at the disappointed, angry or just plain confused faces of the teenagers facing him, knows that the coldness he’s felt from them recently will become insurmountable if Reginald starts handing over punishments meant for Klaus to them, his undeserving siblings.

But they take his silence, his embarrassment, as something else, and finally Diego snaps, “Just d-d-d-do it, you s-s-s-elfish piece of…”

His stutter is really bad today, and Klaus hides the awkwardness by supplementing, “P-p-p-piece of s-s-s-hit?” It’s an exaggerated voice, unkind, he knows, but also meant to ease the tension and make them laugh.

Uh, _yeah_. He isn’t sure why he considered _that_ to be a good idea.

Before he knows what’s happening, Allison has stepped forward and slapped him hard around the face. He holds a hand up, blinking, tears immediately springing to his eyes.

“You _are_ a piece of shit, Number Four. I can’t believe we’ve stuck up for you for all these years.”

Klaus looks to Diego, and sees him retreating from the room, a wounded, angry animal. He looks down at his feet, trying to harden himself as Allison and then Luther follow their brother out, their hard footsteps indicating their fury.

“It was just a joke. No need to get your panties in a twist,” Klaus calls weakly after them. _Luther, comforting Diego? That’s my job_ , he thinks desperately.

“There’s only one joke here,” Five tells him. He gestures for Vanya and Ben to follow him, and Klaus looks at them to see them staring back in shock, betrayal, It hurts so much to see them like that, his two gentlest siblings, and he tries to say something. But tears catch at his throat as they traipse out, leaving him alone.

He tries to process what just happened, how fast it all was; he needs water, his head is pounding, his body shaking, and there’s a pain between his thighs that he doesn’t want to think about. There’s a whole day ahead of him, lessons and more lessons, and he tries to refocus himself with a soft voice under his breath.

“It’s going to be okay. Few hours top, this will all blow over, and it will be back to teasing Luther and goofing about with Diego.”

He nods decisively, straightening up his blazer, as he heads down for Biology.

 

* * *

 

It isn’t okay, though. At first there’s the usual annoying silent treatment, none of them looking at him, or giving into his finest jokes, or giving him an _inch_ of a hint that it’ll be okay, that they just need time. He desperately tries to catch Diego’s eye over dinner, but it’s nothin’ doin’. Diego eats his meal furiously, dark eyes blazing into the table cloth as Klaus tries to stick his foot under the table to get his attention.

“Number Four, do you have something wrong with your leg?” Reginald asks him imperiously. _That_ gets their attention. All of them. He suddenly feels six pairs of pissed off eyes at him, as well as Reginald’s own inscrutable expression, and he shakes his head.

“No, sorry, dad, just a cramp.”

He has no appetite for the food after that but he isn’t allowed to leave the table until it’s all finished. The others break off one by one, even Vanya who always takes an _age_ to eat, and Klaus is left in the silence, surprised Reginald has decided to wait it out with him.

“Are you ungrateful for the food your mother prepared?” the old man asks, and Klaus swallows a few peas painfully, shaking his head.

“No, I just feel a bit… delicate.”

“Well, perhaps you should have thought about the consequences of leaving your bed again last night, in order to slut it up with the perverted underbelly of this foul city.”

Klaus is taken aback by Reginald’s ugly language; he’s never heard that word from his mouth before - _slut_ \- and it hits hard. He knows fathers aren’t supposed to say things like that, but Reginald has never really treated him much like a son. He shudders a little, unable to control his body.

“I trust your siblings informed you of the new understanding we have?”

“Yes, daddy.”

“I am deadly serious, Number Four. I have long since been disgusted with your provocative, wearisome behaviour. It is time for The Umbrella Academy to cut its losses. If you continue to act out, your siblings will grow more and more frustrated with you. If and when the time comes, if you cannot get your powers under your control, and contribute effectively to the team, you will be cast out, and they will be pleased to see you go. Do you understand?”

Klaus nods, staring down at the not-nearly empty enough plate of food. He thinks he might throw up.

“You do not deserve a family if you cannot add value to it,” Reginald continues, and Klaus wants to scream at how fucked up that sounds. Families are supposed to love you. Families aren’t supposed to _demand_ things from you. Especially not… especially not your sanity, which is what Klaus loses every time a ghost wraps itself around his body, screams at him in pain.

Families are supposed to _protect_ you, aren’t they?

But he isn’t one to speak about family, to moralise on what they should and shouldn’t do. Klaus knows he is toxic, knows he makes life harder for his siblings, not better. He bears his burden noisily, rails against it in inexplicable ways, tries everything he can to be someone else, and they all have to bear witness to it, and deal with the consequences of it.

He knows he isn’t a good member of the Hargreeves family.

He pushes his food about as Reginald stares at him, waiting for some kind of challenge, perhaps.

“I’ll try to do better,” he says, finally. “I’ll get better. I promise, dad.”

“A promise from you means very little at this point,” Reginald surmises. “But I suppose it’s better than your usual sass. Very well. If you would like to leave your dinner, you may.”

“Thank you.”

He’s tired from _everything_ today, but despite that he doesn’t sleep well. He lays awake for a long time in bed, listens to the distant chime of the grandfather clock in the hallway, counting down the hours until he has to be up again. When he does drift off, it’s mentally exhausting, painful; he wakes up to the sounds of Diego trying to yell at him, but not being able to.

“You need to get better,” he tells himself fiercely.

Somewhere in the darkness, a ghost whispers back, “You’ll never be better.” Shivering, he realises it’s now been a whole twenty four hours without any pills.

 

* * *

 

There’s no way he can go drug free after that particular bad night’s sleep; vowing to himself he’ll be better tomorrow, he’ll just stop tomorrow, there’s plenty of time to put this right, he finds two pills under a loose floorboard by his bed, and pops them into his grateful mouth. Immediately he feels the effect take hold, a reassurance it’s going to be okay, that even if everything else sucks today, at least the ghosts won’t be able to point that out to him.

He’s even more relieved with his foresight when Reginald comes to his bedroom door. They both know what that means, and Klaus doesn’t even bother to act inquisitive anymore. Wordlessly, he follows his father down the stairs and out of the kitchen to the garden, wrapping thin arms around himself as the frost of the morning prickles the skin underneath his pyjamas, his socks soon saturated in water as they trudge through the garden, through the thicket of trees, to the small stone mausoleum that looked a lot bigger when Klaus was little, and still dominates his nightmares.

“Twelve hours, I think,” Reginald tells him breezily, and Klaus accepts it without argument even as he screams inside. Twelve hours means no breakfast, lunch, and probably dinner, unless Reginald takes pity on him and asks Grace to save him some scraps.

He stumbles in, hears the door slam behind him, and he checks his sleeve, giggling as he pulls out two more pills.

“Can’t get me today, ghosties.”

It makes it better, certainly; the ghosts are too concentrated here for the pills to work completely, but they’re benevolent, ineffective, and he can shut them out through singing, even if he can’t quite sleep through it.

And anyway, every time he closes his eyes, he sees Diego’s face, hardening and hateful, and the others piling in to turn their cold, apathetic gazes on him.

 _“The littlest worm you ever saw got stuck inside my soda straw”_ , he sings to himself.

It’s going to be a long wait. May as well infuriate the ghosts with a few choice, off-key songs from his childhood.

 

* * *

 

Saturday morning is reserved for sparring, and Klaus wakes a little more energised than usual, hoping that the break his siblings had from him yesterday will have relieved some of the tension from the day before.

Breakfast gives him no clues, as Allison and Luther have been taken off for training, Diego is getting a uniform fitting as he’s outgrown his recently, and all he’s left with are Five, Vanya and Ben. Five ignores everyone during meals, of course, and Vanya and Ben are their usual twitchy selves.

He bounds into sparring with a new sort of energy, ready to put this stupid issue to rest, and doesn’t even roll his eyes at their father’s monotonous commentary on their performance last lesson (Klaus was second from the bottom, as usual, besting only Ben), and the need to hit new targets this time around.

But even if he doesn’t roll his eyes, he’s not exactly taking it _seriously_ , because Reginald gives them the same spiel every session. Therefore he’s surprised when he lines up with Allison, first of all, to find a challenging look in her eyes, a determination he’s never seen before.

He raises his arms defensively but she easily immobilizes him, sending him crashing to the floor. Her moves are swifter, harder, and he looks up at her questioningly, receiving only a cold gaze in return.

 _Okay, fair enough_ , he thinks.

Luther is next, and he’s Klaus’s second favourite person to spar with at the best of times, but today he thinks he might live up to his name, shooting up to number one on that list. Klaus learns from Allison, not moving into defensive so quickly, aiming to dodge and then disarm, but Luther is a great hulk of a boy, and he easily overpowers Klaus’s movements with brute force, a hand wrapping around his neck as he pins him to the ground.

“Dad, I don’t think Klaus is trying very hard,” he says, that little - okay, _big_ \- snitch, and Reginald nods at Vanya who silently marks a demerit on the board next to Klaus’s name. _Great_. Even if he wins two matches, now, he’ll still only be even with Ben for last place.

Five is easily his least favourite, always aiming for underhand tactics that leave Klaus disorientated and breathless. He’s still rubbing at his neck from where Luther grabbed it when Reginald blows his whistle, and has no time to adjust to the sharp pain at his lower back, Five teleporting from one side of Klaus’s body to the next in order to deliver a hard kick that he thinks was meant for his ass but strikes a little higher.

“Oops,” Five says, as Klaus whimpers in pain, falling to his knees, already tired and aching from his three encounters. It’s a relief when he gets to Ben, who is his usual timid self, but Klaus is fully disorientated at this point, praying for it to be over, and even Ben manages to flip him (thankfully, a lot less painfully), Vanya clapping her hands delightedly from the sidelines.

“Diego,” Klaus whispers, when Number Two comes to stand in front of him. “Please, look at me, Diego, I want to-” _apologise,_ he finishes in his head, because Diego has struck him round the face - something that Reginald approves of during _real_ encounters with bad guys, but is meant to be a tap when they’re practicing on each other.

This… isn’t a tap. Klaus feels tears at his eyes as Diego brings a knee up to Klaus’s stomach, the ceiling once again coming into view as Klaus falls back against the training mat.

 _Okay, so… still not over it_ , he concludes to himself, as Diego walks away without a backwards glance, let alone reassuring hands pulling him up and brushing him down, which is what he’s always done in the past.

His performance score is miserable by the end of the second and final round - languishing in bottom place, and it’s not even close. Diego has won the session, and the others clap him on the shoulders, even Luther congratulating him.

Klaus waits for them to head out the door together, their half hour of play time (yes, Reginald still calls it play time, even though they haven’t _played_ for years now), finally upon them, which used to be the highlight of Klaus’s week.

“Wait!” Klaus says, as he catches them up in the corridor. Five looks back at Ben and Vanya, telling them, “Go, you two, we’ll handle it,” and Klaus’s heart sinks at that, because there’s nothing to be _handled_ , he just wants to man up and apologise to Diego, to all of them, to reassure them he’s going to be better.

“I just-” Klaus starts, faltering under their harsh expressions, Diego’s particularly hateful, “I know you guys are right. I fucked up. I’m sorry.”

They all look at each other, and Klaus catches Allison rolling her eyes at Luther, who nods back in agreement. Okay, _wow_ , way to give him a chance to explain himself…

“The thing is, Klaus, you’re always apologising. After a while it tends to lose any meaning,” Five explains to him. “This time, you’ve shown yourself up for the hateful, vindictive piece of junkie trash you actually are. I’m sorry if that’s hard to hear, but it was hard for _us_ to hear you go for the brother that has protected your sorry ass repeatedly in the past.”

“I know,” Klaus says. “And I… I know actions speak louder than words. I’ll try to do better. I don’t know what you want me to do to prove myself, but I’ll do it. Just… just say it.”

There’s a small, vindictive smile on Allison’s face as she says, “You mean that?”

Klaus nods, but it’s uncertain, because her expression doesn’t match the benevolent sentiment of her words.

“What shall we ask, guys? We said he’d try to do this, so how are we going to see if he’s being genuine?”

It’s a theatrical appeal to them. They’ve clearly discussed this at length.

“Well, Diego, how did you feel when Four mocked something you had absolutely no control over?” Five asks. Klaus falters a little, thinking this isn’t going to go anywhere good.

“Humiliated. A little disappointed, I guess.”

Klaus tries to catch Diego’s eye, tries to convey with every fibre of his being how goddamn _sorry_ he is, but he can’t get any purchase on his brother’s attention.

“Interesting. Father always says the punishment should fit the crime. Allison, do you have any ideas for how we could make Klaus feel humiliated as we mock him for something he has no control over?”

Klaus’s heart plummets as Allison opens her mouth and says, with a relish that suggests she’s been saving this up, “I hear a rumor, Klaus, that you peed your pants.”

He starts to cry as he feels and smells the consequences of her words. An uncontrollable wetness runs down his shorts, clearly visible on his bare legs, and they all back away, laughing like children.

“God, do drugs make your piss smell bad or what?” Five asks, holding his nose, and Klaus feels himself trembling, pinned in place by his own humiliation. “What a fucking junkie loser.”

“Go and clean yourself up, Klaus, you’re gross,” Luther tells him, shoving his shoulder, careful not to step in the puddle beneath Klaus’s feet. “Oh, and get a mop for that.”

 _It’s just… just childish humour_ , he thinks, as the four of them walk away, Diego saying, “Wow, I can’t believe you’re that m-m-m-mean, Allison,” but he’s laughing as he says it, and Klaus allows himself to sob when they’re finally enough of a distance away not to hear him.

 

* * *

 

The _rumour_ situation is enough to keep their anger at him abated for a day, though he’ll occasionally hear a muffled laugh in class, Five sniffing the air exaggeratedly, Allison theatrically leaning over to whisper to Luther when she knows Klaus’s eyes are on her.

Diego doesn’t really get involved with the more childish aspects of their game of cat and mouse, and Klaus is grateful for that. So grateful, that he thinks maybe if he can just get Diego on his own, explain himself a little better, without the other’s cutting in, maybe he’ll get through to him.

Well, that’s a mistake.

He sneaks into his bedroom after lights out. Diego is doing sit ups next to his bed, and doesn’t see Klaus at first. When he sits up for his twentieth, Klaus steps forward, coughing quietly. Diego glares at him but does stop, and Klaus is temporarily emboldened by that.

“Dee, come on, this is so stupid. I know… I know I was in the wrong. I’m _sorry_ , okay? I’m really trying here, but it’s hard when you’re all being so-”

“So what, Klaus? Childish? Selfish? Petty? Does that sound familiar, bro?”

 _Of course it does_ , Klaus thinks wearily. He knows he’s all of those things and more, but hates that Diego - protective, perfect Diego - is throwing them back in his face. Surely Klaus has _some_ redeeming qualities?

“I know I’ve been a nightmare and I’m going to change. I haven’t taken drugs since Friday morning, it’s Saturday night now! That’s a day and a half, Dee. I’m _trying_.”

But as soon as the words are out, he knows he’s said the wrong thing. Diego does the math quickly, works out, “You were still popping pills the day after we told you about Dad’s threats?”

“Just… just in the morning,” Klaus pleads. “I was tired, I’d slept like shit, I-”

“Oh my _God_ , Klaus! We all get bad nights, we’re all tired sometimes. I am constantly! I’m doing fucking _push ups_ before bed, even though I’ve run 10k today. What, do you think you’re better than that? Than us? F-f-fuck you, Klaus, our life _isn’t_ an excuse to dope yourself up!”

He’s stood up sometime during his tirade, and is now backing Klaus into a corner. Klaus holds up his hands, swallowing down genuine fear as he tries to tell his fight or flight instinct _This is Diego, Diego would never hurt you_.

“We love you, and you just… you must hate us, to want to constantly _escape_ from this so-called shitty life, which could be a lot fucking worse if you ask me! W-w-we were saved as babies, raised by a rich man who gave us everything we could need, we have super cool powers, and _still_ you complain. I just… I can’t, I-”

He smashes his fist into the wall next to Klaus, and Klaus raises his hands in fear, tears running down his face.

Everything Diego says is true. He’s ungrateful, selfish, there are so many others that have it worse than him. He tries to ease his body away, suffocated by Diego’s intense demeanour, but the crash to the wall has alerted Luther. He rushes in with a guard dog mentality, dragging Klaus away from Diego.

“You tried to start a fight?” he asks him.

Klaus looks at Diego and nods. What else can he do? Diego doesn’t correct him, and Klaus doesn’t expect him to.

“I’ll be telling father. We’ll probably get punished for it, but I’m not about to let you sink any lower,” Luther informs him. “Now get to bed. You’re done here.”

He shoves Klaus out of the bedroom, and Klaus chances one more look at Diego, but wishes he hasn’t. His brother is resting his head against the wall, breathing out painfully, and Klaus would do anything to hug him from behind, to tell him he loves him, that he’s sorry for everything.

Instead he goes back to his howl-ridden room, where the ghosts are already clamouring for their pound of flesh.

 

* * *

 

Luther’s report to their father leaves him with cane marks against his thighs and buttocks, and a warning that next time it will be the mausoleum. Klaus accepts it with good grace, disconcerting Sir Reginald a little; he snaps, “I don’t know what you’re hoping to achieve, Four, but it will stop now.”

It’s kind of funny, really, that Klaus is trying desperately to be the son and brother they’ve been wanting him to be for years, and _they’re_ now the ones trying to hamper it.

He seeks out Ben and Vanya in his free time, hoping they’ll allow him to sit with him, if nothing else, because there are few things that drown out the ghosts better than Six and Seven’s lengthy discussions about music and books and all the other nice things Klaus has always been too hyper to sit down and enjoy. But Five guards them like an angry prison warden, shooting daggers with his eyes when he comes close. Klaus can’t be bothered to argue, and it’s not like they can’t see his desperate expression.

They can see it, but they just don’t seem to care anymore.

It gets to him, it really begins to get to him. Loneliness is something new - he’s seventeen  years old, brought up with six other siblings exactly the same age, _loneliness_ is basically a foreign concept to him, or at least it was in the past. Now he can go an entire day without one kind word, one small wink or smile, literally no affection, nothing.

And the whole time, the ghosts are there, telling him all the things he knows to be true. He’s a slut, a witness to murder, a junkie, a waste of space. He’ll die alone. Nobody will know and nobody will care.

On Friday night, their low, eerie voices become too much. He needs something, _anything_ , and he searches frantically through his stuff, finally grabbing Dazzle The Unicorn, easing her stomach open to find… a note.

_Nice try, junkie. I’ve cleared you out. Five x_

He sinks onto his bed and lets a scream into his pillow. It’s a bad idea - in the next moment the ghosts join him in a desperate chorus of howls and groans and pleas, and he tries to breathe, to settle himself.

“One… two… three…. four…” he tries. “You can’t hurt me. You’re not real.”

“If we’re not real then neither are you,” a man Diego once murdered, in a bid to rescue Klaus from being murdered himself, whispers in his ear. “At least _you_ can hear us. Who hears you these days, pretty one?”

 _Well, he’s a sadistic asshole with one eye missing, and a damn weird expression on his face. But when he’s right, he’s right_ , Klaus thinks to himself.

And then he remembers… there’s a whole city out there. Men who can hear him, that want him, that tell him nice things and give him treats and stroke his hair and call him beautiful.

He doesn’t even think about it. He undresses from his pyjamas, pulls on some tight trousers, a pink top that droops low enough on one shoulder to show his pretty collarbone off fully. After applying some eye makeup, he feels ready, better than he has in ages as the familiar feeling of anticipation curls in his stomach.

This is what he needs. Validation that he’s here, that there are people out there who will look at him with something other than hatred or disappointment.

The city feels alive as he catches the tram downtown. All around him, groups of men and women huddle in seats, passing bottles back and forth, their clothes colourful and unique, an extension of their personality. Klaus smiles, trying to feel part of it, but occasionally he’ll get a look that knocks him from his natural high. Looks of pity, maybe, or concern.

He supposes he does look awfully young compared to the other Friday night revellers.

But there’s a club, _Utopia_ , where he feels welcome. Where men buy him drinks and know his name and think it’s an absolute hoot that a kid from the infamous Umbrella Academy is gracing them with his presence. He heads there, trying to ignore the ghosts that walk alongside him, telling him to go home, that he’s not wanted anywhere, but at least he won’t be killed at home.

“A) I’m wanted there, and B) nobody hurts me in Utopia. It’s like Disneyland for gays!” he tells a concerned female ghost who is trying fruitlessly to drag him by the sleeve, her hand disappearing through his arm each time.

He’s waved through by the smiling bouncer without having to wait in line. And inside he feels the familiar thrum of music through his body, the bass low and dirty, plucking him like a chord. _God_ , he wants to dance so badly, wants to dance until he can’t feel any part of himself, wants to dance from now until the end of time.

“The _Seance_!” someone greets him, and he turns to see a group of guys he’s hung out with before. “Thought you were never coming back. Thought your daddy had finally put his foot down,” one of them - Johnny, he remembers - exclaims with glee.

Klaus holds up his arms theatrically, does a little spin, preening a little when he sees them take his body in hungrily. “Spank me hard and call me a naughty boy, because tonight I’m disobeying daddy! Tonight I need to have _fun_.”

They cheer him on, hands reaching forward to pull him into their fold. A drink is pressed into his hand and he’s about to take a sip when Five’s note flashes through his head…. _Junkie..._ And Diego’s furious, helpless expression as he tells Klaus… _We love you, and you just… you must hate us, to want to constantly escape from this so-called shitty life_ … He looks at the drink, knows it’s nothing, just a vodka and coke, but it’s what it will lead to that makes him balk at the sight of it.

 _Why are you here?_ he asks himself. _Why are you here when you’re meant to be getting better. Being better. Doing better._

“Hey, what’s up, baby,” Johnny asks him, wrapping a large hand around Klaus’s trembling fingers, pressing them tighter against the glass. “We’re so happy you’re here. Remember the last time, huh? How good you were for us?”

Klaus looks at him, blinking, and Johnny chuckles to his friends.

“He’s forgotten. Fuck. Baby, you were like a little Duracell bunny. Couldn’t get enough, could he, fellas?”

The last time he’d been here, the night had ended hazily. He’d hurt the next day, between his legs. He’d put it down to dancing too hard. But… even then he knew. Knew it was more than that.

Now he looks from face to face of the different men encircling him, ready for him to drink.

“I don’t feel so good,” he says, standing up. “Just gotta take a-”

“Why don’t you drink that first? They say vodka can cure all ills,” another guy, Klaus doesn’t even know his name, suggests. They’re all getting agitated, he can see it on their faces.

Klaus brings the glass to his nose. Sniffs it. There’s an iron like smell, faint but obvious. Vodka isn’t supposed to smell like anything, he remembers Five telling him that once.

So he does what any reasonable person would do. He chucks it in their general direction and tries to head for the door. But they’re grabbing at him, at his waist, between his legs. “Fuck you, we’ve been waiting all fucking week for another go,” Johnny tells him. Klaus screams, but it’s lost over the heavy music. Johnny’s hand comes up to his mouth and Klaus bites into it, hard.

It’s enough. The much older man pulls away, hissing in pain, and Klaus frantically makes his way out of the club, his small, swift body easily able to maneuver between the mass of people on the dance floor.

He doesn’t allow himself to cry until he gets home, until he knows the danger is past. The shadow of the house, as opposing as it is, feels protective towards him, and he knows the men won’t have followed him this far.

Except… the men might not have followed him, but there’s still another obstacle to overcome when he climbs back into his bedroom. Allison, Five and Luther are all sat around his room waiting for him, Five taking up head position on the bed. They’re discussing something when he comes in, whispered voices, and Klaus wonders for a moment if they’re maybe here to make amends. But then reality hits him: it’s the middle of the night, he’s climbing through his window, and this is exactly what started this mess in the first place.

Sure enough, Luther starts with an aggressive, “Where have you been?”

Klaus is, for once, too tired to give a sarcastic answer. His defences stripped, he shrugs like a surly child, heart still beating in his chest from the run back to this exact point.

“What are you doing in my room?” he asks, tired. “Just tell dad, let him deal with it.”

“Oh, you’ve love that, wouldn’t you? Further punishment for us while you escape scott free.”

Klaus thinks about the caning, the mausoleum, the humiliation of wetting himself, and, worst of all, the silence of his brothers and sisters when they’re around him. He’s not entirely sure how Luther can class what he’s going through _escaping scott free_.

“I didn’t take anything,” he says, trying to give them _something_ to make this easier. “I realised… it was a mistake to sneak out. I was just…” he shrugs again.

“I actually think he’s telling the truth. Look at his eyes. His pupils are usually dilated. For for the first time in months, our idiot brother might be sober,” Five observes. Apart from the _idiot brother_ insult (which, _ouch_ ), he suddenly feels a rush of affection for Five. _See_ , he thinks. _I’m not a complete hopeless case._

“But,” Five continues, and Klaus’s heart sinks, “he still sneaked out, knowing father does regular checks. He still hasn’t learned his lesson. Clearly he was in need of a high, just a different type of high.”

Allison snorts at that. “I think I know what that is.”

Luther turns to her, confused. “What?”

She rolls her eyes at him. “God, you’re so innocent, Luther. He went out to get fucked. Like dad says, he’s an addict. And when people are addicts, they’ll switch out one addiction for another. In this case, he’s decided if he can’t be high, he’ll turn to sex instead.”

“You’re one to talk!” Klaus snaps. “We’re all addicted to something! Diego to his knifes, Luther to you, and you… you’re the worst of all. When was the last time you went a day without rumoring someone, hey?”

He knows it will cost him but he’s _tired_ , he feels invaded by their hostile presence in his room. He just wants this nightmare to be over. He stands his ground, looking at her angrily, but he falters when he sees a calm, composed expression cross her beautiful face.

“You’re right, actually. It’s almost been a whole _day_ since I’ve done it, and I’m kind of bored right now.” She smirks, his heart sinking even further. “Hey, Klaus, I heard a rumor,” she begins conversationally, and Klaus wants to sob, knowing this will be humiliating, that he deserves it for snapping at her, “that you admitted to the three of us how much of a slut you are.”

Five looks impressed with her, Luther mildly uncomfortable, as Klaus tries to fight it, but he knows deep down it’s hopeless. “I’m a slut,” he says. He remembers her exact words, _how much of a slut_ , and he adds, “I’m a dirty slut. I’ve let men kiss me, touch me, drug me, and I’ve gone back for more. I don’t remember my first time having sex, that’s how much of a slut I am. I’m filthy inside and out. I’m worthless. Men tell me I’m just a pretty face, that I’m dumb, a dumb twink. I still smile and giggle for them because they give me kisses and soft touches as they’re saying it. The ghosts call me a slut, tell me how I’m going to die alone because of how worthless I am. Dad says I’m a slut, that I’ll end up a whore, that-”

“I heard a rumor you stopped talking about this!” Allison says, her voice panicked, and Klaus stumbles back, the spell gone, tears at his cheeks that he didn’t even notice until now.

“Jesus,” Luther says, open mouthed. Even Five looks uncomfortable. But… Klaus doesn’t get it. Isn’t this what they _wanted_? Isn’t this what they’d been baying to hear?

“This isn’t fun anymore,” Allison says with a choked sob, and Klaus isn’t sure who she’s speaking to, but she hurries out of the room without a backward glance. Five and Luther stare at each other, before Luther hurries after his favourite sister, leaving Klaus alone with his most feared brother.

 _What did I do_? Klaus thinks, desperate. He doesn’t want this anymore. Doesn’t want to disappoint anyone anymore. He looks at Five imploringly, silently begging him to say _anything_ , to make a mean comment, to break this strange mood that Klaus’s words have cast over the room, over his siblings.

“Get some sleep,” Five says, his voice cracking. “Just… just get some sleep, Klaus.”

 

* * *

 

But sleep isn’t forthcoming, not with the ghosts as loud as they are. The next day, he’s pulled out of bed by Sir Reginald, his alarm blaring as he fumbles to turn it off. He’s exhausted, his whole body aching, and he just wants to resist, to say no, to say _I refuse, this is my body and I’m allowed to make decisions on its behalf._

Instead, he takes a deep breath, begins, “Sorry, dad, I-”

“Training,” his dad interrupts him. Klaus begins to tremble, shaking his head. _No no no_ , not when he’s this sober, this despairing, please, god, _no_.

But of course, nobody can hear his silent pleading as Reginald pulls him roughly down the stairs and shoves him across the garden, treading their usual path.

He doesn’t remember much about that day, but it’s dark when he’s finally let out by Pogo. He remembers the ghosts… _touching_ him, but that can’t be right, can it? Remembers one of them, the man that Diego killed, prising his legs apart, pressing into bruises, pressing into places that Klaus doesn’t want to think about.

 _Sick_ , he tells himself. _You’re sick for imagining this._

He eats his dinner and promptly throws it up; Grace takes his temperature, her beautiful, animated face showing concern when she checks the reading.

“Rest and water, Klaus!” she declares, her voice brightening when she sees him looking at her with a numb expression. “Off to bed with you now, my brave boy.”

It’s the first kind thing anyone has said to him in weeks. He’s too tired to cry about it.

There’s no escape in his bedroom. The same ghost is back, stroking his hand down Klaus’s face, and Klaus can _feel_ it, can feel an icy grip that makes him feel like he’s falling, falling hard, with rocks all around him that he can touch but can’t get a purchase on.

“We’re getting stronger,” the man tells him. “Soon enough, I’m going to be  _inside_ you, pretty one.”

Klaus doesn’t know what the proverbial straw is within that sentence, but one minute he’s trembling and the next he’s screaming, screaming with despair, with agony, with the pain of everything that’s been weighing on him this past week.

And once he starts screaming, he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your lovely comments on the previous chapter - I promised an update today, so here it is, and I hope you enjoy it. This has definitely been something I've needed to write for a while, a catharsis for the pain I'm usually putting Klaus through in my writing, a chance to shamelessly indulge in some major comfort after the hurt! Please, let me know what you think.
> 
> The POV shifts from Klaus to Allison for a large part of this chapter. I'm not usually a fan of multi POVs, particularly in short fics, but I felt someone else needed to do the emotional heavy lifting for a while. My instinct at first was to go with Diego but for some reason I kept thinking about Allison, and how her character is more widely linked to the over-arching themes of this fic.
> 
> This is definitely an AU by the end, but more of a canon divergence AU, where lots of things are the same but there are some significant differences. You'll get what I mean if you make it that far!

Allison isn’t sleeping well. Her body feels hot, prickly, tense all over, no matter how much she tries to focus on relaxing each part of it.

She’s still thinking about Klaus’s words last night, and has been desperate to talk to him all day, to apologise for… everything, really, but especially for making him reveal so much about himself and what other people ( _i_ _ncluding our own father_ , she thinks darkly) have said and done to him. She knows her power is a blessing, as Reginald tells her, but Klaus was right when he said it was also an addiction.

It had hit a little too hard, if she’s being honest with herself. Last week, when she’d told him to… to wet himself, she thought she’d taken it too far then, but Five and Luther had convinced her it was appropriate, that it needed to happen. She’d believed them, because that was easier, and guilt is definitely one of her _least_ favourite emotions.

But last night… last night had been something else. Last night, Klaus had admitted things that had to be true, because her powers compelled him to tell the absolute truth, or at least the truth as he understood it.

And if they _were_ true… Allison’s heart sinks further, her body becomes tenser, and the prospect of sleep seems much further off.

The others have always told her what an amazing sister she is. Even Grace’s robot brain is able to compute this objectively, to praise her for it when she needs a little reassurance. But right now, Allison feels like the worst sister in the world.

When she hears Klaus padding softly, kitten-like to his room - by now she’s well aware of the different sounds her siblings make when they walk, Vanya’s nervous skittering, Diego’s aggressive stride, Luther’s clumsy ambling - she psyches herself up to go and speak to him, knowing it’s now or never.

But then the screaming starts, and she feels herself freeze in place, pinned by her own guilt and horror.

 _This is linked_ , she thinks, _this is all linked to what we did to him_. She remembers what he told them about the ghosts, the _awful_ things they say to him. Her body becomes a dead weight, going from tense and ready for action to leaden down with horror in a split second.

 _It will stop in a moment_ , she tells herself. _He’ll stop any second and it’ll be okay._

It doesn’t stop. She hears footsteps, raised voices, and she feels herself panicking, finally remembering an age old tactic that gets her through even the most mundane of tasks. “I heard a rumor you got up,” she scolds herself. Thank God, it works, and she runs out of her room and into Number Four’s.

She’s horrified by the sight she sees.

Klaus is curled up in a dark corner, knees at his chest, eyes vacant, unseeing. He’s screaming repeatedly, over and over, and his brothers and Vanya are crowding around him, begging him to stop. Luther is telling him to stop being a drama queen, to _listen_ , and Allison rushes forward, pushing him out of the way with a fierce glare that makes the large boy shrink back, suddenly tiny.

“Klaus, Klaus,” she says, getting on her knees and trying to take his hands, but they simply hang limply in hers, no recognition that she’s touching him, “Klaus, I heard a rumor that you calmed down.”

He continues to scream. She looks back at her confused siblings wildly, until Diego’s eyes go wide with understanding. “He can’t hear. A-A-Allison, he can’t hear you.”

“I heard a rumor you can hear me! I heard a rumor you calmed down, Klaus!” she says louder, trying to match his screaming, but she knows the screaming isn’t the problem. She’s right here, right in front of Klaus’s face. Under any normal circumstances he’d be able to hear her voice even through his own screams.

 _He can’t hear because he’s somewhere else_ ,  _somewhere far away_ , she thinks, tears splashing down her face.

“I don’t know how to help him,” she admits, and behind her, she hears Vanya start to cry too. She turns to see Diego looking sick to his stomach, before he pushes her aside, kneels in front of Klaus and leans his head in close.

She can’t hear what he’s saying but she sees him wrap his arms around Klaus, his lips brushing Klaus’s forehead, and she feels sick, so sick, that instead of encouraging this easy affection the two had for each other, she’d conspired to make Diego feel resentful, disgusted, for a transgression that Klaus had paid for a thousand times over.

And now, she doesn’t know whether to feel better or worse as Klaus’s screams begin to quieten, his body slumping, exhausted, but his eyes still unseeing, huge and green but not sparkling with life the way they usually do.

“I heard a rumor that you got a whole night’s sleep,” Allison tells him, moaning with relief when it works, Klaus’s head hitting Diego’s shoulder as his eyelids close completely.

“Children,” they hear their father say from behind them. They turn to see him, Grace and Pogo standing by the door, and Allison defensively wonders how long they’ve been watching. “That’s enough. Diego, carry your brother to the bed. Then sleep. All of you, sleep. We’ll take care of Klaus until he’s better.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Ben asks nervously. “Why was he-”

“A manic depressive episode brought on by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” Grace tells them cheerfully, thinking it’s more important for them to be reassured with her bright smile than any programmed concern. Nonetheless, they see Reginald glare at her, one of those rare times when his creation goes off-book and gives away too much of the situation. She looks to the side, takes in his expression, and straightens up her posture rigidly. “Now, you heard your father. Back to bed.”

Allison remembers something from the night before. Klaus, about to tell them all about their own father’s ugly words to him. _Slut_. _Whore_.

She looks into his cold, appraising eyes, and tells him, “No.” It’s as if she raised her hand to strike him; he looks at her with genuine confusion and a reactionary anger that she bristles at, raising to his challenge.

“What did you say?”

“I said no.” She glares at him, at all three of them, because she knows Grace is simply a logical extension of his own brain, and Pogo will reason himself out of anything to protect his master. “I know my rumors don’t work on your weird alien brain so I can’t use them. But we’re Klaus’s family too, and we’re going to be the ones to help him now. We’ll take it in turns, coordinate it. It will have minimal impact on our training. We’re not going to leave him until we’ve fixed this.”

“Are you all in agreement with Number Three?” Reginald asks them. Allison turns to stare down her siblings, but she doesn’t need to. Diego is already settled in at Klaus’s bedside, locking fingers together with his unconscious brother. Luther and Five are nodding in affirmation. Even Vanya and Ben are standing their ground with grim determination.

“He’s our brother,” Ben says, bottom lip trembling. “And we’ve got to make it up to him.”

God, her heart  _breaks_ at that. She remembers Ben and Vanya asking why they couldn't just talk to Klaus, to let him know this wasn't about hate, and the four strongest members of the group snapping at them, telling them to trust them, that Klaus needed to go through this in order to get better. And they'd trusted _her_ , especially, their confident, protective sister. And now they're internalising it, thinking  _they're_ just as much to blame as anyone.

Allison feels sick to her stomach.  _Your fault, this is your fault_.

“As always, Number Six, your foolish sentiment will be the ruin of you,” Reginald tells him, and Allison bites down a growl when she sees Ben shrinking away to nothing. “Very well. You may attend to Number Four, and I expect to only ever be missing one of you at any given point during your training programme.”

He leaves the room, Grace and Pogo trailing after him. They all let out a collective sigh of relief. Allison feels Luther’s hand on her shoulder, gentle and affectionate. “Well done, Allison. You’re the best.”

 _No, I’m not_ , she thinks, as her eyes wander over to the skinny, pale, body of her brother, shuddering as he begins to moan in pain, even now, in the deepest of sleeps.

 

* * *

 

Days pass, and Klaus remains in an almost comatose state. He acquiesces for water and Grace’s chicken soup, allowing himself to be fed like a baby bird; he lets Diego take him by the arm for regular toilet breaks, will even stand under the shower as they attempt to wash him, fully clothed, because they can’t get near his pyjamas without him trembling.

But he seems incapable of any genuine interaction. His eyes remain glassy, empty, and Allison’s heart breaks a little more every time she has to look into them. It’s Klaus, but it isn’t, and her every waking moment is gripped by a creeping dread of anxiety.

 _What if this is it what if he’s stuck like this forever your fault your fault your fault_.

They mostly all feel guilt, but Diego’s guilt is the only one that seems to outmatch Allison’s. Despite Reginald’s orders that only one accompanies Klaus at a time, Diego refuses to leave his side, apart from occasional shower breaks, even when the others insist he needs to cover them so they can spend time with Klaus too.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he tells anyone who comments on it, his expression grim and single-minded, and nobody can bring themselves to argue, sick of confrontation of any sort at this point. It’s like they’re attempting to plaster over cracks, but the cracks are more like fissures, splitting apart their foundations, and all they can do is act like it’s going to be okay.

“I just feel I’m missing something,” Diego tells her as she sits with him one afternoon. Klaus is asleep, again, his chest rising and falling gently, his slumber not currently riddled with demons. It makes Allison feel worse, in a way, because he’s always looked so angelic, so young when he’s fast asleep. “I get that we were… h-horrible to him. That stuff with the rumor, that was f-f-fucking low, even for us. But… he didn’t do anything until days after? It’s like something caused it, something more than....” he trails off, not knowing how to finish this.

Allison sighs, knowing she’s going to have to share that awful Friday night encounter, knowing it will change everything once she does.

Because of course she hasn’t told Diego, Ben and Vanya about that night in Klaus’s room: her, Luther and Five bearing witness to Klaus expressing the horrible things that have happened to him, the terrible way men treat him, the way she’d forced that out of him without his consent. Violated him, really, in a long line of violations they'd known nothing about.

She explains it now, expecting Diego’s anger, needing it in order to expel some of the heavy guilt she feels, because if anyone’s words are sharp enough, angry enough to cut her down to nothing, it’s Diego’s.

She isn’t expecting him to put his head in his hands and weep softly.

“Diego?” she asks, and he shakes his head.

“G-g-give me a minute,” he pleads, and she plays with her skirt nervously, bunching it in her hands as she watches powerless, Number Two crying in a way she’s never heard before.

Finally she hears him murmur, “We had no idea what he was going through.” His voice is surprisingly clear, and she thinks she hears the beginning of anger setting in, though she isn’t sure it’s just directed at her.

“He felt worthless, like he wasn’t good for anything, and we pushed him over the edge because… because we couldn’t just ask him what was wrong, couldn’t have asked why he kept going out, why he needed to drug himself up. One minute he was our brother and the next he was an addict and we never thought…. Never talked about how _off_ that was.”

“We just believed the worst,” Allison agrees. _God_ , now _she’s_ crying too, and the feeling of helplessness makes her feel panicked, trapped in. “We thought he was doing it for attention, being a brat.”

“You know why, don’t you?” Diego asks, and Allison looks over to see him breathing heavily, as though he’s trying to stop himself from doing something.

She does, of course she does. _Reginald_. 

Maybe… just maybe… when Klaus is better, she’ll work out a way to deal with their father. To make him see how his words and actions towards Klaus over the years have categorically twisted all of them to be unkind, thoughtless, when faced with challenging human emotions. She understands now it might have been any one of them, if it wasn't Klaus - that he was simply the easiest because he was the first to rebel against the status quo Reginald had insisted on.

Human emotions are _meant_ to be challenging, she realises. They’re not meant to be simple, rational, right or wrong. Reginald had always taught them this: the world is made up of good guys or bad guys, and if you’re a bad guy, you don’t get the luxury of empathy.

They both start out of their chair when they see Klaus stirring, blinking awake. Diego is immediately out of his seat, kneeling down next to him, stroking his hair, asking him, _“Hey, baby bro, how you feeling today ?_ ” Of all the siblings, he’s the one who talks to Klaus most easily, most naturally, while Klaus fails to give any hint of a response. Today, though, Diego looks fed up, sick, and he follows Klaus’s eyes round the room, pupils flickering back and forth as he seems to take in something they can’t see.

“Allison, I want you to do me a huge favour,” he says quietly. She stares at him quizzically. “I want to know what it’s like. What he sees. I know it might not work but can you t-try… try and rumor me to… you know? _Experience_ this, for, say, five minutes?”

She shakes her head adamantly. Reginald has instilled in her the importance of never, _ever_ using her abilities to mess around with her powers or her siblings powers, and though her fuse when it comes to their father is pretty much lit and on countdown right now, she knows that particular rule is for all of their safety.

“Allison, _please_! Five minutes, that’s it. I need to know what I can do to help him. You know this makes sense. If I can just… see the ghosts, maybe I can talk to them, tell them to leave him alone.” Diego is crying again, and Allison can’t stand it. She hates this, hates all of it, but she knows it’s her words, her actions, that have got them here, and now it’s time to start putting this right.

“Five minutes?” she asks desperately, and he sighs with relief, nodding. “Fine. But please, Diego, come back. I can’t…” she looks at Klaus, motionless on his bed. _I can’t be responsible for hurting two of you_.

“Diego, I heard a rumor,” she says, her heart pounding in her chest, “that you can see Klaus’s ghosts for five minutes.”

At first, it doesn’t appear that anything has happened. Diego looks around, confused. Then all at once he starts to tremble, eyes huge with fear, and she gasps, jumping out of her chair as he begins to keen with a horrible, messy, guttural sound that sounds like a demonic mockery of crying.

“No, no, no,” he’s saying repeatedly, his hands clenched into fists, attempting to shield himself with crossed arms. “Stop, get away from me, don’t-”

“I heard a rumor you stopped seeing them!” she snaps, but she knows it won’t work: this one won’t override the five minute instruction, no matter how hard she tries. “Diego, please, look, they can’t hurt you, they can’t-”

Diego falls to the floor, looking like he’s having a seizure, mouth moving - it looks like he's murmuring  _Sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry for killing you_ and Allison feels the hairs on the back of her arm stand on end. There’s movement beside her and Klaus is suddenly up, swift as a cat, green eyes full of emotion for the first time in days.

He kneels down beside his brother, wraps his smaller body around Diego’s chest and whispers into his ear, sweet words that Allison barely hears, too panicked and too frightened to fully understand them.

 _It’s okay, you dumbass, they’re okay, they don’t want you, they want me, just breathe, Diego, just breathe, I’m here, I love you, I won’t let them hurt you, just breathe_.

It feels like an eternity but at some point, Diego stops sobbing and shaking and convulsing, and Klaus’s whispers become more lucid, more tangible as Allison’s brain begins to signal to her body that some of the threat has gone.

“W-what happened?” Diego asks, blinking, looking around. He stares at Klaus, then lunges upwards to hug him, butting their heads together.

“Motherfucker!” Klaus says, rubbing his head with a yell. “Are you done trying to steal my power _and_ knock me out?”

He’s giggling, the first time Allison has heard him giggling in so, _so_ long, and her already fraught emotions can’t take anymore. She shoves Diego to one side to hug their brother as well, feeling his skinny arms wrap around her, and then he’s crying too, and laughing, and it’s kind of just one big snotty mess as Diego wrestles with her for the chance to take Klaus in his own arms again.

“They followed you, all the people we've killed, they've followed you," Diego is babbling, and Allison sees Klaus grip his brother's hand tightly, anchoring him back into the room. Diego's eyes settle on Klaus and he asks, "What… what is the mausoleum? Why did they talk about-” Allison has no idea what he means, but she sees Klaus’s eyes widen in horror. Then they hear footsteps on the stairs, cutting off Diego's questions, and it dawns on her that the commotion from the bedroom has attracted the attention of their other four siblings.

Five arrives first in a fizzing electric flash, and she turns to smile at him, to let him know it’s okay, Klaus is back, but the joy she’s feeling drops away when she sees his face.

“I _knew_ you were faking it, I _knew_ it,” Five says, his eyes wide with anger. Allison is on her feet immediately, silently telling him _no_ with her eyes, but Five isn’t listening. She gets it, really: out of all of them, Five has been the most reluctant to admit their guilt, these past few days. He’s never wrong, his whole existence seems to live and die on his ability to see a situation for exactly what it is. Klaus - logic-defying, uncategorizable Klaus - messes with the strongest, surest element of his personality. And as a result, he’s been reserving judgement on Klaus, but also on himself, for days now.

“Look at him, he’s fine! Don’t tell me he’s made a miraculous discovery in the time it took us to finish our Spanish lesson today! Fucking _bullshit_. He’s just attention seeking, as always, and-”

He doesn’t even have time to flash away - one second he’s talking, the next he’s received a fist to his face, courtesy of Diego, and the force is enough to send him backwards, reeling, his power temporarily forgotten as Diego falls on top of him, hitting him angrily.

“You’re not going to talk about him like this anymore, I won’t let you! You don't know _anything_!” Diego yells, and Five flickers, clearly trying to teleport away. But his confidence is faltering: there’s something in his eyes Allison has never seen before. Something like genuine fear. And she doesn’t think it’s from Diego’s punches but something else. Something… ending, maybe.

“Stop it, Two,” Luther instructs him, leader voice on, but _that’s_ not going to do any good, and Allison feels temporarily righteous, thinks maybe Diego should do this for as long as he needs to, because he’s correct, Five needs to know how this ends, with Klaus safe, and the rest of them repenting for the way they’ve treated him.

Ironically enough, it’s Klaus that stops it. With a soft touch to Diego’s shoulder, a whisper in his ear, Diego falters, letting Klaus wrap his arms around him and pull him up.

“What’s happening?” Vanya asks, her tiny voice at odds with the looming atmosphere that’s engulfed Klaus’s bedroom.

“It’s… it’s a long story,” Allison tells her. Tells all of them. “I think… maybe it’s time for Klaus to share it. And for us to listen.”

She looks at Five, who is standing up with a slight limp, wiping blood miserably away from his nose.

“I suppose that would be sensible,” he says, with a small grimace, clearly hating having to swallow his pride.

Klaus blinks at him, then scans the room with worried eyes, as if he’s afraid one of them will suddenly go _N_ _ot really, Four_ , before resuming their torment. The pain in the eyes of her siblings lets Allison know she isn't the only one thinking this, and hating it. His voice shakes as he says, “It’s okay, I don’t need to-”

“You do,” Allison insists. “Please, Klaus. We haven’t… we haven’t listened to you for so long. We could have lost you, and it would have been our fault, and I can’t… can’t _stand_ it. Knowing how much we hurt you. I know we have _no_ right to ask you anything, but please, please tell us what you’ve been going through. We won’t interrupt. We won’t judge. We just… we just want to help you.”

Klaus looks at Diego, and Allison sees him silently begging, eyes wet. Finally, after the longest time, he nods, cheeks flushing.

“I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

 

* * *

 

He tells them everything. The ghosts, and why he hates them so much (Diego chipping in, when Klaus falters, about the fact that so many of the ghosts are men they've killed during missions), the way Reginald will constantly tell him how useless he is, even when he’s doing what’s asked. He talks about the mausoleum, which _none_ of them knew about, and Allison feels sick when she thinks about how _stupid_ she’s been, how Klaus would always disappear completely during his training sessions and they never thought to ask where he was going.

He talks about the first time he had alcohol, at Reginald’s bar, and the first time he had LSD, slipped to him by an older man as they’d been greeted by a crowd upon returning home from a successful mission.

When he talks about the clubs, about the men there, who would give him more drugs and drinks in return for little _favours_ , he looks disgusted with himself.

“I didn’t want to come back. I knew what you thought of me,” he says, and Allison thinks back to that horrible night, the words she’d forced Klaus to say. “When the ghosts started to touch me… started to do more than just taunt me… I just wanted it to end. I went somewhere. Somewhere I don’t know. I could still see them, they could still touch me, but it was like I just… I don’t know. Like I didn’t care anymore.”

He blinks back tears as he looks across to Diego. “But then, Diego was there… he could see them, and they could see him, and I just… I had to help him. I had to come back. I had to try and get him through it because I... I know how awful it can be. And now, I’m here, but… I don’t know. I don’t think anything has changed, has it? I can’t be sober because the ghosts are getting more powerful all… all the time. And I can’t be high because you hate me even more when I'm high. So… I feel like there’s nowhere left for me now. Apart from maybe,” he sniffs, scrubbing at his face with his hand, “maybe leaving. Moving out. Trying to make it on my own, where I can’t hurt you guys anymore.”

“No!” Diego says, and the other join him in a chorus of agreement, even Five. “Klaus, you’re our brother. We _don't_ hate you, even if we've done a bang-up job of making you believe that. We don’t want you to be high all the time because it hurts you, it cuts you off from us. But we don’t want you hurting from your powers, either. We don’t want you to be haunted every day.” He sighs. “God, if I could take your powers from you, I would in a heartbeat.”

“You wouldn’t last one day, Mr Sharp and Pointy. Not too long ago you were stretched out on the floor, doing some weird form of interpretive dance, because you had to spend five minutes with them,” Klaus points out. Diego sticks his tongue out at him and they both laugh. The sound of it, so sweet and innocent, makes Allison’s heart hurt.

“I need to think about this situation logically. Clearly, we need to act smarter than we have been. All of us,” Five says, coughing uncomfortably, in what almost sounds like an admission of failure. Allison’s mouth turns up despite herself. "And, uh, for that... and for the rest of it... the pack mentality, I guess, and for... for not telling you how much I love you, not even once... I'm... I'm genuinely sorry, Klaus."

There's a few open-mouthed gawps at that, before they all remember themselves and one by one they start to give Klaus their own sincerest apology, Klaus looking a little more confused with each admission of love. When it's Allison's turn, she opens her mouth to say something, but can't speak, simply chokes out a  _sorry_ , which Klaus responds to with a gentle squeeze of her hand across the circle.

“Perhaps we can just… take it a day at a time? Help Klaus when he’s… when he’s going through the worst of it? Because there have been lots of times when he hasn’t been high, but he’s been happy,” Vanya says once they've finished. Klaus looks down at the floor, uncomfortable, but Five is too lost in his calculations to pick up his reluctance to talk about that.

“So what’s the common factor, Klaus? What distracts you from the ghosts when you’re not high?”

“It’s stupid.”

“Stop that,” Allison says. “I heard a rumor you’re not allowed to put yourself down for the next twenty four hours.”

“Allison!” Diego snarls at her, “Stop rumoring him, that isn’t allowed anymore.”

“I’m trying to help!” she defends herself, heart sinking. _God, why can’t you get anything right these days_ , she scold herself angrily.

“It doesn’t matter. He’s had enough of his free will being taken away from him.”

“You guys realise I’m literally right here? And doing fantastically, by the way, thank you Allison.”

She smiles at him, even though she knows Diego’s right. She wants to make everything okay, wants to put this all right, but she’s fully aware that her words have wielded the most hurt over Klaus, that without her, he might have been able to get through the ordeal that the other siblings put him through, but her actions were the hammer that hit all the worst of it home.

“Anyway. To return to the subject,” Five says, irritated by the tangent the conversation has taken, “You were going to tell us what helps you to manage your powers.”

Klaus looks at each one of them, eyes wide with nerves, his cheeks colouring a little. “You guys. Being happy with you guys… when we’re laughing. Having fun. That helps. I guess.” He twists his face uncomfortably.

“You were right. That _is_ stupid,” Five says. He receives a fluffy unicorn to the head, courtesy of Diego, and a chorus of other voices telling him to _shut the hell up_.

 

* * *

 

They really do try after that, but it’s hard to find time to make Klaus feel happy and safe in the world’s bleakest house. This is brought into startling focus one evening when Reginald insists on Klaus’s presence at dinner; it’s been a week, and he’s eager to return the Academy to normal, insisting structure and routine is the most efficient way to get there.

But something’s changed. Now they know about everything: the mausoleum, the canings, the ugly words frequently hissed at Klaus. Allison knows that it’s changed, things have changed, and she isn’t sure if it’s for the better or worse, but she knows the situation is completely untenable as it currently stands.

Five pushes it first, predictably. When Sir Reginald asks him to pass the buttered potatoes, Five holds the bowl up and tips its contents on the table. Ben gawps, Vanya gasps, Klaus giggles nervously and Diego looks ecstatic. Only Luther looks torn, still not ready to abandon his faith in his father, and Allison feels something then, a dulling of her feelings towards him, that makes her feel sick even as she admits it to herself.

Everything is changing. Ending. They’re almost adults and their father knows it. He’s losing his grip on them. Suddenly Allison begins to wonder what it would be like to live a different life, a better life, far away from here, and the feeling feels welcome, not scary, like it would have done once upon a time.

“And the point of that was…?” Reginald asks Five, who smiles sweetly.

“Maybe I misheard you. Or maybe… I don’t know… I’m beginning to realise that your words shouldn’t be trusted.”

“My instructions on wanting the buttered potatoes were perfectly clear and certainly to be trusted, Number Five.”

“Perhaps you’ll give me a caning, then, to punish my insolence?”

You could hear a pin drop in the silence that follows. Klaus has stopped giggling now, and his face is pale, colourless, eyes darting between Five and their father.

“That would be fitting, I suppose,” Reginald says, nonplussed. “But I suspect that, given your new found protective instinct towards the group’s weakest member, there is an even more fitting way to ensure compliance. You suffered through punishments inflicted on the group when he acted out. Now, Number Four will suffer through punishments administered by myself when you decide to play _saviour_.”

He’s on his feet quickly, striding over to Klaus, and Allison feels sick, that heavy feeling of being pinned to one place rendering her immobile again.

Reginald looks to Five, then Diego, then Allison, as he grabs Klaus’s shoulder and tears him from his chair, Klaus beginning to tremble under his grip. “This is applicable to all of you.”

Allison doesn’t know what happens first, whether Diego gets to him fastest by feet, or Five fastest by jumping, but Reginald suddenly has one of Diego's knives turned on him, and slightly less impressively, a dinner knife wielded by Five. Though it isn’t sharp, the implication is still clear.

“I think we’re done,” Five says. “I think your time to order us about is over, old man.”

“Poppycock! I am your father. How dare you… Two, Five, _put those knives down_. Be serious, you don’t have it in you to kill me.” But they all notice him dropping Klaus’s arm, stepping away from Number Four as if he’s trying to diffuse the situation.

“You’re right,” Diego says to him, lowering his knife. “You made us killers, but you deserve to die old and alone, poisoned by your own bitterness.” He nods at Five, who lowers his own knife in response.

“Things are changing around here. We’re done doing the bare minimum when it comes to self care, and caring for one another,” Allison tells him, finally finding her voice. “I can’t rumor you, but I can rumor them to leave with me, if you don’t accept our new terms.”

Reginald’s face is a picture. His mouth opens and closes like a dumb fish, trying to make sense of the situation.

“And you do _not_ get to hurt any of us anymore. If we find out you’ve caused pain - emotional or physical - we will ensure that every media outlet in the _world_ knows about the true circumstances we were brought up in.”

“Screw you, Reginald,” Ben finishes off, with a flourish. Allison thinks Reginald’s incredulous expression is the best memory they’re ever going to have of him.

 

* * *

 

She feels good for it, for establishing a new culture in the house; it’s like a blanket has been pulled from her head. But Klaus’s gratitude, his unwavering expressions of love for her, for all of them, isn’t nearly enough to assuage her guilt, and she still thinks repeatedly of leaving, even as she knows it will tear an already fragile Klaus apart if he doesn’t understand something fundamental about their actions towards him.

“You know it was our fault, don’t you?” she asks him one day, as he runs his fingers through her hair, massaging oil into the dry ends. “It wasn’t… sometimes I feel like you think you deserved it all, and that’s so far from the truth it’s-”

“You don’t need to say this,” Klaus says quietly.

“I do, though. Like, what three words come to mind, when you describe yourself? Be honest.”

He immediately answers, “Toxic, slutty, unloveable,” and it’s like those awful words have gone round in his head a thousand times before. He swallows painfully, looks at her with wet eyes. “It’s okay, Allison. You’re all good people, and I pushed you too far.”

She doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to persuade him otherwise, and the feeling terrifies her. She _needs_ him to know, needs him to see, and her old addiction returns, for what she hopes is the last time around him.

“I heard a rumor that you knew how much we loved you,” she whispers, her throat barely holding up for the next sentence. “I heard a rumor that you accepted you were worthy of love.”

He starts to cry, in the next moment, and then he clings to her and cries harder, and she clings him back and tells him _sorry, sorry, we’re so so sorry_ , until the words have imprinted deep into his brain, and his soft, fragile body finally slumps in peace, and all she can think about is how beautiful he looks in that moment, like there's a halo around his hairline that she's never seen before.

 

* * *

 

Klaus feels the weight of his bed depress underneath him, an arm around him that engulfs him in warmth. He’s been shivering all night, the storm making the ghosts restless, and Diego’s big arms are like a warm safety blanket, weighing him down comfortably.

“You okay?” his brother asks.

“I hate storms,” Klaus confesses. He feels Diego’s breath against his neck.

“I know, baby bro. That’s why I’m here.”

Allison’s words from earlier today rush back to him, he _feels_ the love pulsating from Diego’s chest, pushing into the heat of his back. He leans back into it, smiling, protected. The ghosts around him disappear into wisps of air that light up the room like a constellation of stars. A galaxy just for him.

He lets them guide him to the healing place of sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PSA: In real life, things can hurt as badly as they did for Klaus in this. Trauma can build up, depression can settle in like a familiar frenemy, whispering half-truths and outright lies in your ears, and anxiety can stop you from wanting to burden anyone with it. Unfortunately in real life we don't have the power to magically make ourselves or others feel loved, as Allison was able to do with Klaus in this piece of fiction. But it is possible to introduce love and care to ourselves and to others, which is something I've been working on a lot over the past year. And it's important for me to say that if you suffer from depression, anxiety, PTSD, anything that makes you feel cut off or alone, that the most important thing you can do is reach out to someone for help. Your mind can trick you into thinking nobody will care, but my experience over the years is there's nothing further from the truth. And if there isn't anyone in your personal life you can talk to, try calling a dedicated helpline (in the UK, for example, we have The Samaritans, who are amazing) or reaching out to a friend online. 
> 
> Be safe and well and try not to let it get to breaking point. Everyone deserves to feel loved. <3


End file.
